M&M 3rd or 2nd ed?

[Aemoh87]

Mutants and Masterminds: I don't know which to get but I am hoping to play over J term. Tell me about each and hopefully which one to purchase!

[Nerd-o-rama]

This thread has some pretty good thoughts on the edition differences. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220006) I think it's still even legal to reply there.

[Vknight]

As the early posts point until 'Ultimate Power' really fleshes things out. I suggesting looking into it along with the core rulebook if the wordings confusing.
Outside of that personally 2ed.
2ed, It is Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha.
Not Physique, Something, Agility, something

3rd also makes its charisma a dump stat by extremes even D&D 3ed did not do.

So personally for taste I'd go 2ed. And from what I've seen of 3ed I prefere how 2nd handles powers etc.
It can be confusing splitting poison, confusion, and paralysis into different abilities. Kids seem to get it somehow.
So in 3rd they combined them all together under 'status' and said you can select one. The wordings kind of bad and not so fun.

[J.Gellert]

I prefer 2nd. 3rd isn't that much different, but I felt it needlessly complicated certain things (abilities for one) just to "escape" the D&D themes.

Since 2nd edition works great, and I believe in "don't fix what's not broken", I'll stand by it. Besides, so many splatbooks already.

The Affliction power of 3rd is handy, but I don't think it justifies a new edition.

[Binks]

I'll vote 3E. IMHO affliction is not hard at all to learn, and is extremely flexible, but I also feel that the different abilities are a good addition when talking about a superhero game. Splitting Dex into Agility and Dex makes a lot of sense in a system that wants to be able to build the Flash, he shouldn't necessarily be awesome with ranged weapons, but need to be agile.

The abilities aren't that complex really, they just split strength into strength (dmg and lifting) and fighting (accuracy and dodging in melee combat) and dex into dex (ranged fighting) and agility (dodging ranged attacks). It opens up quite a few builds actually, I had a superstrong but not super accurate big guy in one game that would have been difficult to build without having strength and fighting as different attributes (not impossible, but it would have required more powers, one for grabbing w/ superstrength, one for punching w/ superstrength, one for super lifting, whereas 3E I just raised STR and left FGT low). The other attributes are basically just renamed (or not renamed for int and wis) versions of the D&D attributes.

It's not perfectly be any means (Presence is completely broken, for one thing, as in broken useless) but I think it's a step forward from 2E. And I'm a big fan of systems that are more accomidating in their first edition, rather than having lots of splat books. The way things are setup in 3E there are very few powers you can't easily stat out (my group has only seen a grand total of 2 powers we had to fudge, over 4 moderate length campaigns with a huge variety of supers including a superstrong alien, an AI supercomputer that could possess robots, a sentient UAV, a psychic ninja, a super lucky guy, and a Canadian cyborg)

[Tengu_temp]

Splitting Dex into Agility and Dex makes a lot of sense in a system that wants to be able to build the Flash, he shouldn't necessarily be awesome with ranged weapons, but need to be agile.

While I agree with your general statement... You do realize that dexterity in M&M 2e does not affect your attack or defense, right?



3rd also makes its charisma a dump stat by extremes even D&D 3ed did not do.


How? For 2 pp, you get +1 to three skills and to straight charisma checks. Depending on how often the latter appear in your campaign, this is either only slightly overcosted in comparison to component parts or is equally valuable.

In comparison, most 2e stats are dump stats - unless you want ridiculously high skill checks or just have a lot of various skills that base off the same stat, you're better off buying the component parts separately. Constitution is the major exception.

I like how 3e encourages high stats, but you can still be as capable with low ones if you compensate in other fields. In 2e you must have superhumanly high stats if you want to be extremely skilled at something, but apart from that high stats are generally discouraged because, as I mentioned above, they rarely give the bang for their buck.

[KnightDisciple]

The abilities aren't that complex really, they just split strength into strength (dmg and lifting) and fighting (accuracy and dodging in melee combat) and dex into dex (ranged fighting) and agility (dodging ranged attacks). It opens up quite a few builds actually, I had a superstrong but not super accurate big guy in one game that would have been difficult to build without having strength and fighting as different attributes (not impossible, but it would have required more powers, one for grabbing w/ superstrength, one for punching w/ superstrength, one for super lifting, whereas 3E I just raised STR and left FGT low). The other attributes are basically just renamed (or not renamed for int and wis) versions of the D&D attributes.
....Wha?

Dude, M&M 2E has Strength only impacting melee damage and lifting capacity anyways. Accuracy to hit is your Attack Bonus stat. Which can be split into different values for ranged and melee (to represent someone who's good at one but not the other) if you so desire.

You can already make a character who hits hard but isn't accurate: It's called being Damage-shifted, aka having -5 Attack / +5 Damage.

As for grabbing, I guess you mean grappling? I thought that just took your Strength and Super-Strength scores/mods into account. It's not a distinct power on its own. Strength is damage and some lifting, whereas Super-Strength is lots of lifting.

Which makes sense, in that it means you can crank super-strength up without worrying about damage caps (which fit into the overall schema of Power Level caps, which I've really taken to prefer to the more D&D-ish schema of "crank it all as high as you can! No limits!"), so that your powerhouse can hit really hard, and lift a couple hundred tons, without a whole lot of finagling.

Really, you're acting as if these different abilities didn't already exist. They did. It sounds like they just renamed them in this edition. :smallconfused:

[Binks]

Doh. Forgot the attack stat from 2E, it's been a while since I looked at that system. My bad.

And the problem with Presence in 3E is that those 3 skills cost .5 pp to get a +1 to apiece. So if your GM doesn't do lots of straight Presence checks (I honestly can't think of a charisma situation that bluff/diplomacy/intimidate couldn't cover) then you're spending 2pp to get a +1 buff to 3 skills...which would normally cost you 1.5pp. It gets even worse if you use any sort of extra skill points per pp system.

I still think 3E is the better system myself, because you can do pretty much everything you want straight out of the core book without needing any splatbooks, but the difference are less pronounced than I had originally thought.

[Tengu_temp]

I honestly can't think of a charisma situation that bluff/diplomacy/intimidate couldn't cover

I can, and depending on the kind of hero you're building, it might be something you do all the time: inspiring people by sheer charisma. Though I think that some actual charisma presence-based feats advantages would be nice.

[TheOOB]

3rd edition had some good ideas, but had some really really bad design decisions. While most the attributes in 2nd edition didn't do much other than augment skills, in 3rd the attributes are all over the place in terms of how cost effective they are, and honestly the whole ranged and melee defense thing is really clunky. I like the idea behind what they did with the powers, but the powers section is designed horribly, so it can be hard to build the powers you want.

[Vknight]

3rd edition had some good ideas, but had some really really bad design decisions. While most the attributes in 2nd edition didn't do much other than augment skills, in 3rd the attributes are all over the place in terms of how cost effective they are, and honestly the whole ranged and melee defense thing is really clunky. I like the idea behind what they did with the powers, but the powers section is designed horribly, so it can be hard to build the powers you want.

Exactly and Tengu you can do the same in 2e in buying up charisma but in 2e its a viable option unlike in 3e were it seems tacked on...

[Tengu_temp]

There are only two reasons why buying straight charisma is viable in 2e:
1. Charisma-based feats. Those are nice, 3e needs more advantages that base on ability scores. Does it even have any at the moment?
2. The skill PL cap is on ranks, not on total modifier. I already said why this is a bad idea and why the 3e approach of capping total modifier is much better, so I won't repeat myself.

But if you don't want any charisma-based feats or a very high modifier to bluff/diplomacy/whatever, 2e charisma gives you very little bang for your buck. Much less than 3e presence.

[KnightDisciple]

There's actually a cap on total skill modifier in 2e as well.

Remember, Ability scores have a PL-driven cap. That means that the ability mod has a ceiling, as does the skill mod.
I mean, yeah, that still leads to pretty high total mods, but you have to invest a lot of PP in it, so it seems right to give you that "reward" of lots of success.

Consider: PL 15, your skill ranks cap at 15. Ability caps at 50, which is a +20 score. So, total skill mod is +35. Which is pretty high...but since PL 15 is for people like Superman when he's at his peak (but not his "do anything PL X peak"), or Silver Surfer, or basically any cosmic-level entity...that kind of makes sense.

[Tengu_temp]

There's actually a cap on total skill modifier in 2e as well.

Yeah, but you can't reach it without superhumanly high stats. Which makes building Batman-type skilled badass normal characters much more difficult.

[KnightDisciple]

Yeah, but you can't reach it without superhumanly high stats. Which makes building Batman-type skilled badass normal characters much more difficult.

Then again, a Batman-type with 16-20 in most of his stats, maxed skill ranks, and Skill Focus, plus maybe Ultimate Skill, can pretty easily face most static challenges.

After a point you don't need +35 unless you want someone who can instantly turn a Hostile into a Friendly via Diplomacy (which, granted, is what I've done with my primary character over on Freedom City Play By Post; he's horrifically good at Charisma-anything, especially the big 4 interaction skills).

But with, say, 20 Dex and 15 ranks of Acrobatics, you only need to roll a 5 to always move through a threatened square. With literally no rolling, you can walk across a surface less than 2 inches wide. With skill focus, you could do that same surface, but slippery and uneven, with no challege (auto-10 means a 35, and 2in wide with those 2 modifiers is...35).

Keep in mind that the stuff that really ramps up, DC-wise, is typically opposed checks. At which point a Batman-type is likely facing someone of roughly equal ability. Or, if it's something like a Strength check, he has some Feat or something that lets him outsmart the situation.


I'm not saying it's a perfect system, but you don't need super-high stats to get decent results.